Thursday, February 25, 2010

Revisions to two of my favorite pieces made by me: the first, COMMENTS WITHOUT COSMOS, a kind of tale of heroes, finds some new heroes to add to the pages, including but not limited to Jerry Garcia, David Hockney, Robert Kennedy and Nancy Kulp. You know-Nancy Kulp. You'd recognize her right away. OK.

The image atop this note is from the first spec drawing for COMMENTS. Back then it had a funnier name: CRITIQUES, COMPLAINTS, ODES AND INTERLUDES. Wasn't really keen on that after a while but I did like the way the first letters looked: CCOI. It had an ampersand at first but I have gotten very tired of reading them in Silliman's Blog so I decided to stick to the good ol' American AND. Sweet land of liberty. Speaking of which,

If you want to buy the newly engorged MAYBE WAVY, that's available, too. It's expensive ($19.99) but it's about 550 pages so there's got to be at least one you like. I like the one about the polar beer on the Icee cup.

New ones here, too. About forty or so. Please say hi, drop a comment, purchase or think about purchasing one or two of these things.

If you asked me which one you might like better, the best answer I could give you would be: "I have no idea."

Monday, February 15, 2010

Today I thought about John Lennon. I thought about how his father Alfred Lennon met his mother Julia in Sefton Park, which is a very beautiful park. I thought about how Julia was sitting on a wrought-iron bench. I thought about how Alfred was wearing a bowler and carrying a cigarette holder. And he had rickets. And he was 5’4”. I thought about she said that he looked ‘silly’ and about how he said that she looked ‘lovely.’ I thought about how he was 15, about how she was 14. I thought about how, when she told him to take off his hat, he threw it into the lake. I wondered about what Julia thought when she saw the hat floating in the lake. I wondered if she laughed. I thought about a little black hat and a little English man. And I wondered if he had not taken off his hat, and if he hadn’t thrown it in the lake, whether or not teenagers would faint in 1964, watching the Ed Sullivan Show, on tiny, tiny, black and white tvs, turned up really loud and whether or not mothers and fathers would call upstairs, ask if everything was all right, and wonder what exactly was going on.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

I grew up with my Frank Lloyd Wright stamp. I never knew who he was, but there he was, plain as day, in front of a wavy flag. Well, I thought it was the flag. It actually wasn’t a flag at all, it was the Guggenheim. That’s kind of a wavy-looking building. But I had no idea what that was, and no idea who Frank Lloyd Wright was – and if someone said his name I probably would have said “Wright, Wright, you’re bloody well Wright” and if someone had said “Guggenheim” to me I probably wouldn’t have said anything. I probably would have gone to the record store and bought RUBBER SOUL and a Payday candy bar with its delicious crunchy peanut coating and nougat center. That’s because the Frank Lloyd Wright stamp came out in 1966, just like Rubber Soul. My favorite song was ‘Think For Yourself’ – which was also probably Frank etc.’s favorite song. I also like ‘In My Life’, which made me think about the past, and I was 9 years old. I think I had problems. ‘The Word’ was cool, too, especially when their voices break up when they said “Have you heard / the word is love?” Something else: this was a stupid 2¢ stamp. Even in 1966, that wasn’t much. A Payday candy bar, with the delicious crunchy peanut coating and nougat center, was a dime – 5 Frank Lloyd Wright stamps. The Franklin Roosevelt stamp was 6¢, the George Washington stamp was 5¢, even the Francis Parkman stamp, whoever he was, was 3¢. Nobody liked Frank Lloyd Wright. I can tell. I think that they were jealous. I wonder what he would have thought if he had known that a bearded hippie guy with a baseball cap on backwards would write about his love life in, like, 2000 and something. There’s one thing for sure, though: there wasn’t a stamp out there that was equal in value to a Payday candy bar. Frank Lloyd Wright was not alone. Women loved him. I think the crunchy peanut coating and nougat center is what sets Payday apart from all the other candy bars and Presidents. Frank Lloyd Wright had a lot of sex. People worshipped him, and then there was the stamp thing. You never know what will happen when you're dead. Frank Lloyd Wright's portrait was drawn by Patricia Amarantides and Ling Po. I wish I had one.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Today, to my sorrow, I discovered that Pauline Kael might have gone to the movies a lot, but she didn’t like the movies very much. Well, except for HIS GIRL FRIDAY. I think that she should have named her book: “One Night At The Movies Watching HIS GIRL FRIDAY And 5000 Other Nights Also.”

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Today I discovered that Teddy Roosevelt could recite The Song of Roland in the original archaic French and declared that it was the patriotic duty of every woman to bear at least four children.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

This is not only the knuckles of Robert Mitchum, but also my relationship to the internet. Today, though, it is all love. Big, juicy love. And here's why:

None of my friends believed me when I told them that I saw this headline in the Weekly World News (50¢) in 1985. Now all of them must believe me, except, of course, for the ones who are just too darn cranky to believe anything.

Love,

Crispy

PS I kinda would like to know how these love bugs are doing these days.

I saw a fox sleeping peacefully on the ground. I hoisted the fox up by the tail. I twirled the fox around my head and finally let it go, watching it fly as far as it could go, until I couldn’t see it anymore. Years later, there would be a holiday named after me: The Day of the Fox. The flags would rise at dawn, and they would be bleached blanc de blanc, and each flag would hold nothing but a very large empty space where the fox used to be. The people would come outside in the early morning and applaud me as I walked along their streets, and you could hear a pin drop. Tea would be served by everyone, for everyone, and the tea would be bitter and sweet, and served warm, naturally, without cups.

Friday, February 05, 2010

I feel like I am sitting on a bench looking out at the sea, such loneliness appears when I think about the semicolon. I haven’t seen one in years – where did they go? I dare not mention this to anyone because usually what happens is someone will say “What do you mean? They’re everywhere!” Which has not been my experience: they are, at best, nowhere at all. It’s not that I haven’t looked: I have. But I am or have been one of those he looks but 'he does not see' types, he who savors the indelicate fashion of folly.

You can watch me if you want. Or you can join me. I am still looking. I enjoy the company, but frankly, you might very well end up as sad as me by the end. But it may be different for you. It certainly is for me. Please join me, won't you?

And so I dedicate this reflection to the semicolon and its seekers, a reflection replete with commas, dashes, and several periods – everything known to man, why, even regular god-fearing colons too, even dashes, like this one – and hyphens, like this: the semi-colon, clearly, nowhere to be found, at least not here, not by my hand, walking along the punctuations of the loneliest and most exciting of seas, with you by my side.

When I read that you folded yourself up like a bird I thought: that makes sense, I can see it. You are wearing a blue coat usually, if it is cold, and it is thin enough to fold along with you, and blue is a natural folding color, the color of the sky. Red, not so much. It’s the color of the cheeks of my Uncle Gustave, you know, as in Angry Uncle Gustave and the Meat Cleaver and the Angry Red Face Thing. If Ol’ Uncle Gustave taught me anything he taught me this: red is expansive; red folds not at all; red is best avoided, red is dumb and a big waste of time. Meanwhile, Blue is the best, blue is love blue and cannot be beat. But if not blue, and somewhere in between the two, you can always turn to naked, what we used to call flesh. Flesh folds up and hides only OK, at least for me, but OK is serviceable enough, when I find solace folded in a suitcase which is, although I can't tell in the the dark, canary yellow–very lovely, but another story entirely.